


Heligoland

by PaxVobis



Series: Long Play [2]
Category: Metalocalypse
Genre: Aftermath, Apologies, Asexual Charles, But A Sweet One, Charles' Blue Dressing Gown, Consensual Kissing, Dead Clowns, Drunk Charles, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s04 The Doomstar Requiem, Fluff and Angst, Guilt, I'm so sorry, II: Electric Boogaloo, Interior Decorating, Internalized Homophobia, Invasion of Privacy, Kissing, Lighting Is Important, M/M, Male Solo, Metal References, Mild Transphobia, Nathan Is An Idiot, Nathan's Apology Fallout, Nathan/Abigail Implied, Nathan/Pickles Heavily Implied, Non-Consensual Kissing, Not Actually Unrequited Love, POV Nathan, POV Shifting, Public Masturbation, Recreational Drug Use, Scene: Keep The Party Going, Self-Destruction, Self-Hatred, Sequel, Shy Nathan, Slow Build, Suicidal Thoughts, Trans Male Character, hip hop references, mwah, trans pickles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 17:57:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10645071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaxVobis/pseuds/PaxVobis
Summary: Dethklok's eternal party rages on as Nathan finds himself alone, guilty and isolated.  He seeks out Charles as a scapegoat, but finds something else instead.Sequel to 'World Coming Down'.





	Heligoland

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a continuation of the R18+ work, World Coming Down, but can be enjoyed without it.

When the submarine surfaced, the star was waiting for them, and even as they were smuggled back to Mordhaus – as though smothered under a cloak, out of the gaze of that evil omen – it burned in the amber sky like it was staring into Nathan’s soul, and he cringed away from it in the limo, and reached for a drink.

Charles had not attended them, had vanished, as if he was not yet ready to face the world.  Nathan had no desire to face it either, and he was confident in the knowledge that Charles was taking care of the Toki situation so like his bandmates smothered himself, indulging in every drug, fuck or bottle that was offered his way, and the second sun dimmed in his consciousness.  And it was that Charles was taking care of the Toki situation, and that accounted for his absence.  Where perhaps Nathan was used to having something snatched out of his hands at the last moment, now the Klokateers that guarded them barely reacted to the threats they posed to themselves.  He’d been allowed to take more than a few goth girls home, his worst enemies beyond himself (freaks, all of them, asking him to carve his name in their backs or bite out their throats; he was more inclined to honor the first, as the second just reminded him how fucked up goth girls were dick deep in some otherwise flawless chick).  Outside of goth girls, he’d heard Pickles boast about LSD, the pure shit, and when Pickles started obsessing on the word ‘pure’ you knew you were in for a bad, bad ride.

But Pickles held himself at a distance still, even when they ventured into the outside world again as a group; Nathan shrugged it off and told himself well, guess it was over then, told himself that’s what he was telling himself, right, real relaxed, it wasn’t a thing, had never been a thing, it was fine.  It didn’t bother him.  And had Skwisgaar started smoking crystal meth?  Ha ha, what a crazy dude right!  Jesus, Skwisgaar.  The thing with Pickles didn’t bother him at all, was the point.  They had bigger fish to fry, self-evident by their manager vanishing into the heart of Mordhaus and never emerging, something else that didn’t bother him because _clearly he had it under control._  What’s that even like, hey, Skwisgaar?   Pass the lighter…

He thought months might have passed.  Nathan couldn’t be sure.  All he was certain of from the last… while… since they’d surfaced… was a handful of memories scattered as easily over a mirror as cocaine crystals as he clumsily lurched forward to show Murderface a particularly smoking picture of Abigail he’d found on her Wikipedia page.

For instance, there’d been a moment where he had accidentally found himself alone with Pickles, in a men’s room in Santa Fe.  Pickles was doing lines off the toilet paper dispenser in the cubicle, and had ignored Nathan as he’d drifted in, taken a piss.  Normally he wouldn’t have been able to resist a quip, but no, Pickles had fallen largely silent since they’d returned from the funeral – in fact, largely absent; Nathan had a faint awareness of television coverage saying he was flirting with celebrity, pissing around with dictators and jungle guerrillas and whatever.  When he was home all he did was get high on psychedelics, not his normal fare, fuck those blown up tranny chicks he had a thing for, and watch TV.  Nathan quietly guessed he preferred his own kind during his time of Avoiding Thinking About Toki, but if he spent too long thinking about it – about Pickles curled up with those girls, two or three at a time, cradling his wasted head against their outrageous fake cleavage and together all grieving for their disassembly and their surgeons and their exquisite corpses, a physical incompleteness and physical scars and physical suffering, and how they completed each other’s freakshow existences – god, it just fucked him up so badly, he needed fucking crack to just get through it.

Anyway, right, so Pickles had totally ignored him, and Nathan had approached the cubicle – almost able to see over the wall, though Pickles had had the door open to snort – hoping to bum a line off him.  “Hey,” he’d said, and Pickles looked up at him in alarm, his eyes wide open and red and crazy, his nose drooling mucus from the drug’s evil path through to his bloodstream, and he’d given this fucked up, evil scowl of fear and slammed the door in Nathan’s face.  And that had been bizarre.  He didn’t even talk about it later, just joked on with them all as usual.  He wouldn’t talk to Nathan directly anymore, had only said a handful of words to him.

But it didn’t fucking matter because Nathan got Abigail and that was all that mattered.  Pickles like, _never_ got into real girls (so Nathan called them, to distinguish since he didn’t have the words, just as Pickles was a fake man), it was a fucking… blue moon kinda thing with Abigail.  So he shouldn’t be too hurt when Nathan got her _anyway_ , because he had all his tricked out whore other halves waiting for his fucked up fake ass anyway, _anyway_ , so it was stupid he wasn’t talking to Nathan, and stupid that he sounded like a sad little boy begging for attention when he did, and Nathan didn’t care anyway, he had other things going on in his life, you know, like Abigail.

Who Charles was sorting out for him, and that’s why Charles wouldn’t talk to them.  Too busy.  You see.

Then there was a particularly dark time in the haze where he’d been standing in some cemetery in Los Angeles County with dick in hand under the full moon, trying to beat himself against the cold into despoiling the grave of a famous clown with his jizz.  He’d had a strange moment of lucidity, standing there alone and jacking off, staring past the grave into the night sky.  There was the Star.  The Star, you know.  Felt like an eye, watching him always when they were out; Nathan instinctively shrank away from it, feeling paranoid of something he couldn’t even articulate.  Like what could happen?  It was a star.  But it was watching him, and in that moment it was watching him jack off onto the clown’s grave and… man.  Why was he even doing that?  It had seemed funny at the time.  And you know, it was very hard to cum when your fate was staring you in the eye at your absolute low point, when you felt it all at once for the first time since the funeral.

The realisation that even though he’d said sorry, he’d allowed the space between himself and Pickles to gape in the aftermath, to the point where the guy couldn’t even look at him during a bad trip.

That the woman he loved and one of his closest friends were being tortured by a total horrorshow with a personal axe to grind, and that was specifically and uniquely Nathan’s fault.  Everything with Magnus was.

That he’d traumatised his manager, scared him so severely during a moment of impaired judgement, no malice aforethought and he couldn’t remember exactly what had happened except that it must have been bad, and the dude couldn’t even look him in the eye anymore so he couldn’t even go get him to deal with the Pickles situation and fuck, _fuuuuuck_ \- -

And here he was, masturbating onto a clown’s grave like it would _fix something?_  Nathan had held his dick tight and stared into the gravestone. _My god_ , he thought.   _I destroy everything I touch._

He gave up after another ten minutes or so, his dick getting too sore and cold to continue, but told everyone he’d jizzed anyway.

And the Star continued to stare him down, night and day, day and night.

It came to pass, then – several months had gone by, or maybe just weeks, his memories smattered and dashed, his attention focused only where it was pleasurable, poured into goth girls or pictures of Abigail, the unreachable treasure he’d snatched from Pickles’ jealous grasp.  On this night, Nathan was curled on his bed naked and scrolling through his phone, accompanied by an unconscious goth chick with bruises around her throat, but she was only unconscious from drinking and bouncing on Nathan’s dick to exhaustion, and now he nursed himself miserably, sore from fucking too much and swimming in booze.  Abigail, Abigail.  A hundred photos of Abigail.  Abigail in college, Abigail in high school with her braces and afro.  Abigail at galas, Abigail!  And how she’d kiss him once they’d saved her.  And how she’d fall into his arms and then to his knees, and his cock hurt to even think about it.  Then after, after they’d fucked, and he wrapped his arms around her dark shoulders and held her close, safe, safe with him since he’d saved her and he’d redeemed himself for Magnus, you know, and he’d won her, fair and square, and she said to him, _Nathan, I LOVE you._

But just imagining it on her lips now, as he looked over his vast room, the aquariums, his throne of a bed, it was so empty, it was so… empty…

Nathan prodded the naked girl with his foot, but she didn’t move.  “Hey, wake up,” he said gently, but nothing came except shallow breathing.  He imagined it ceasing, and her dying, and felt cold inside.

“Hey, wake up.”  The hulking singer sat up, holding his phone and all the pictures of Abigail close to his chest, a bottle of whiskey nursed in his other hand.  The girl did not move except to close her mouth in her sleep.  “I really... need you to wake up,” came out of Nathan, and he didn’t know from where it had risen.  “Just like, say something or… fuck.”

He was way too drunk.  Way too drunk.  Heavy in his body.  Fucked out.  Nathan held the cool bottle to his forehead, shrunk down in his pillows in shame.  He could feel the Star staring at him, even here, even through the heavy drawn blinds.  “Hey, wake up, goth chick,” he repeated again, like it bubbled up out of him, “Please just like, fucking say something… fuck, I hate myself.”

Nathan swallowed suddenly, as though he sucked the words back into himself.  He hadn’t said that, had he?  He hadn’t thought it.  He hadn’t – he hadn’t, you know.  Thought it.  His tongue feeling fat inside his mouth as he rolled the bottle against his skin, his face collapsed in sadness.  “I wish I’d just die,” came out, and he felt the split across his heart as he finally splintered into depression, saw it, willed it out, this wasn’t him and this wasn’t happening, but it was – and it was true – he really really did – and “Oh god,” he whispered, and hated himself.

It was too much.  He couldn’t do it alone.  He saw that sharply now, with his chick refusing to even move, with doors shut in his face – couldn’t go to Pickles, couldn’t go to – to.  He hadn’t had anyone else.   _Door_ shut in his face then.  What a stupid thing to do, to cut off Pickles.  What a stupid, dumbfuck thing to do.  And he hated himself.

With that, Nathan roused, fishing up his discarded jeans and shirt from the blood red manchester on the floor, and left his room and the goth chick to wander the halls of Mordhaus.  Like the Viking lord he was, surveying his kingdom.  To say he was having thoughts of suicide would be incorrect only in the sense that he had no thoughts at all, just a grotesque and oppressive blackness that crushed down on him, smothered him like all the night was a shroud that gathered in heavy folds over his face and buried him alive.

He was drifting again.  He didn’t even realize it.  Past Pickles’ door, shut.  Locked.  Cowering in there with his sluts and liquor, safe in each other’s warped company.  But it wasn’t real, was it, Pickles?  Sluts didn’t understand the pressures of stardom, they didn’t understand the hatred that tainted one’s black soul.  Nathan knew that, he’d searched for a slut that did understand but the only slut that understood was Pickles.   _¿Comprendes?_  Not that he knew that, not that he himself could comprehend it.  But he knew, staring at Pickles’ door as he passed, and then Skwisgaar’s, and Murderface’s, and Toki’s – god, _Toki’s_ – that no slut and no fan understood what was happening when he stood with his foot on the foldback amp and screamed his black guts out his esophagus, _Skull Crush Fuck In Hell_.  No one outside of that band understood, and he knew by the way their notes bent around him.

I LIKE VIOLENCE!

_I am suffering._

I LIKE VIOLENCE!

_I am hurting and afraid._

I LIKE VIOLENCE!

_And I am scared of myself._

And he knew without knowing that the entrails he dragged out in his imagination were dragged out of fascination, that the deep intimacy of blood and gore was intoxicating and terrifying.  That the first deer he’d gutted, he’d felt so close to, her big doe eyes and warm innards, knowing that she was dead and he was dying and damn it, he _wasn’t_ afraid of dying.  He faced dying every moment, looked it in the fucking eyes and said, go ahead, make my fucking day.  

But what if he had killed Toki?  What if that had happened?  And Abigail.  And… Magnus, who was sure to die one way or another, sure to be killed by their people if he wasn’t already dead at the hands of the lunatics he’d gotten mixed up with.  What happened if one of _them_ died, one of the band?  He remembered Charles’ cold, still corpse, the funeral, and upended the dregs of the bottle into his gullet, desperate to kill the bad memory.  Charles was alive and full of life, he knew that, _incomprehensibly_ full of life, as getting too close to any living thing overwhelmed and devastated Nathan.  He was assuaged by his violent, intrusive memories, of crushing the other man against the tiled wall and hot water, and blood down the drain.  Nathan held his head automatically; he couldn’t remember what of that was real and what he’d imagined.  It was always like this.  Hard to tell what was real.

Nathan drifted upwards, his steps heavy with drink.  In his mind, he replayed strobing concert lights and thirsted to be on stage again.  Charles was doing that too – it was fine, it’d happen soon, like so many things just _happened_.  He could rely on that.  There were flagstone stairs under his bare feet, glimmers of the horrible Star through the arrowslit windows, the cold stone radiating into him in the vast, reigning silence of Mordland.  When Nathan had been a teenager, he’d found it crushingly frustrating that no matter where he went in the suburbs there were sounds of people – televisions, cars, talking, dogs barking, no matter how far you walked away from home you could hear them.  Now alone, with the silence stretching for miles, he could not shake how haunting it was.  The only corpses in Mordland were the ones they’d created, the only ghosts their own subjects.  Nathan pulled his hand over his face, the knuckles of his other hand touching the wall for support with the bottle bouncing off the stones with a hollow sound, and climbed onwards.

He was in a corridor.  Shields and fine swords.  Dark.  He noticed they hadn’t been dusted in a while as he brushed his hand across one of them, and found that strange.  Like no one had been up here for a long time – but he knew where this was, which was just past Charles’ office, a place he’d only strayed once or twice before getting bored and cold in the stretching, labyrinthine corridors.  This time he pressed on; wasn’t sure why.  He didn’t want to see Charles or he’d have checked the office, but that would be locked anyway, he’d be down in the control room, he was always in the control room at the moment, or on ‘business’ with the Black Klok, whatever that meant.  Nathan resented the secrets and locks, and a thought came to him – in these corridors, somewhere, must have been the manager’s chambers.

He’d destroy them. Kick the door in.   Just like he destroyed everything.

He still had no idea what they looked like, assumed books and plush upholstery; he’d rip out the pages, leave them gutted and violated with broken spines scattered across the flagstones.  The shattered glass of art deco lamps, the twisted metal on vintage pistols.  Yeah, that’d make him feel better, make him feel less out of control and less like he should be dead, just for a while.  It felt good to destroy, and it felt good to be in control of his own descent.  If Charles was going to hate him, then he was going to hate him for a fucking good reason - though in the back of his mind, Nathan was afraid, as he had seen this behavior before in someone who now would certainly die.  But he wasn’t like Magnus – this was different.  Somehow, it _had_ to be different, he needed it to be.

He decided: it was different because it was Charles, and Charles deserved it.

And Charles _took_ it.  He had taken it.  He was just there, he always took whatever you threw at him, you know, he was strong.  You could just _do that shit_ and it was… not _okay_.  But it wasn’t anger or disgust, though, just like… patience.  He’d get over it, you know.  Give him enough time, he’d forgive Nathan, for everything.

Nathan found a door and went to ram his shoulder into it as he twisted the knob, but the door gave way instantly and dropped him into a dark room, disappointing in its shallow and still air.  He looked around the gloom, bookshelves emerging from the darkness in the dim light from the doorway and suggesting a library; although it was evidently part of Offdensen’s chambers, it was not lived in.  Nathan snorted in the still air, hanging on to the door knob with one hand as he peered around, tried to read some of the titles, but all the books were totally nondescript, old volumes with heavy binding – he made out ‘INTERNATIONAL LAW’ on some, ‘VOL. 266’, ‘FEDERAL SUPPLEMENT 594’.  Jesus fuck, they were just the titles and he was already bored out of his mind.  The carpets were nice, plush maroon thrown over the stone floors, but no furniture, dust on the shelves save for where one or two books had been slid from and returned to their positions.  Nathan silently withdrew, shutting the door carefully behind him.

He felt tricked.  Like his own shadow cast tall in the dim corridor lights, Nathan stalked through the passages, straining his eyes against the dark.  Another empty library room, another door giving way beneath his fist; somehow he knew Offdensen’s would be locked.  Another room.  Boxes of Ikea lamps.  Fuck.  Another room.  COATS.  Just racks and racks of coats, deep in, looked never worn.  Nathan lingered by it, thinking to himself that if Offdensen was lurking anywhere then it was probably in the closet.  But no.  Nothing.  He ran his hand over the coats, watching them fold into one another on their hangers and smelling the laundered wool felt as he disturbed it, then closed the door on them too.  He had to be getting close.

Another turn, like he had no idea how deep he was now, but like its namesake, a labyrinth, it seemed this passage only went to one destination.  His drift had turned pensive, careful, as the lights grew dimmer and then gone completely, Nathan stretching his hand out to the cold walls to feel his way.  He sometimes felt the edge of a gilt picture frame as he moved along through the cave-like, pitch darkness, or came across a rare light flickering lonely, and so he suspected this part was _supposed_ to be illuminated – only someone had failed to keep it maintained, and it had fallen into darkness.  The Doomstar stared through the stone walls at him, reminded him of precisely why.

There had been no doors for a while.  The corridor was cold, sucking.  Then his searching fingers touched the frame of another, glided over the wood to the knob which was a cold bronze handle, clutched and turned it downwards – thudding against the lock.

Got you, thought Nathan, and wrenched against the lock once more.

He was foolish to think he could break in with just a twist, and he resolved to knock it in.  Gathering his strength up, he drew back slightly and then rammed, shoulder first, against it, the door buckling in its frame.  Nathan bounced back from the wood, touching the opposite wall and hanging there a moment as he caught his breath before launching at it again, slamming with the flat of his shoulder to the crunch and splinter of wood.  Still it would not give way.  After another blow, he hung against the door a moment, panting lightly, and thought he could hear the strike echoing down the infinite hallways around him.

But it kept going.  Nathan realized slowly, pressing his ear to the wood as he caught the sound and focused it.  No echo, _music._   Beyond the door.  Music and a locked door… oh, _no._   No no no no no _no ‑ ‑ ‑_

“Okay!  I’m coming,” came Charles’ voice from beyond the door in a terse snap, and Nathan heard, “Don’t need to knock the damn door down,” grumbled too close to him before he leapt back against the far wall.  He was _home_.  Had been home the whole time.  The heart beat strong in Mordhaus.

Nathan considered his options.  He could run.  He could just fucking _bolt_ and Charles never even had to know he was here.  But god he _would know_ wouldn’t he?  And if he didn’t, well, what kind of a fuck did that make Nathan?  The kind of fuck that stalks traumatized men to their bedrooms just to freak them out in the middle of the night and get them unnecessarily worried about their national security.  And those eleven words were the most Charles had said to him in weeks.  Nathan ached to speak to someone, anyone, who might _understand_ what he was going through.  And Charles was good like that.  A convenient body was also a convenient pair of ears.

He’d left it too long anyway.  The lock slid back and Charles opened the door, pulling the tie of his robe tight at his waist and glaring through his spectacles, barely lit from a distant light beyond.  But his glower softened as he took in Nathan, frozen there, and he stepped back to hold the door open for him automatically.   The music was louder but still dampened by distance, violins and gay flute shit.  Not very metal.

“Nathan,” said Charles, and his tone struck the vocalist as tired rather than furious, “Ah, come in - - - ”  He hesitated as soon as he said it, uncertain this really was what he wanted to invite, but he swallowed any regret and just held the door open wider.  Nathan, who would never understand why he showed such openness and kindness in the face of how terrible they were, entered.

He looked around the room within as Charles closed the door behind him with a soft click.  They looked to be in a modest living room, lined on the far wall as he’d expected with bookcases, big side benches, globes.  A gloriously beautiful lamp on one of these benches provided the only light in the room, splashing panes of gold over the room and setting the polished wood surfaces aglow.  Above it, glass cases with weapons in strange shapes and from far reaches of the globe, another thing Nathan would never understand but appreciated all the same.  The air was warm and still.  There was a chair – and the books looked rare and bizarre – and even a guitar stand, and on it a Gibson with a gorgeous golden burst finish.

Could Charles play guitar?  Holy shit.  That was a _weird_ thought.

Charles had noticed him staring and stood behind him, looking past the singer to the guitar.  “She’s a beauty, huh?” he said softly, and Nathan glanced back at his manager, then at the guitar again. 

“Uh, yeah?”  Just looked like a Gibson to him.

“I didn’t believe what they said at all about the ‘59s until I gave one a go.  And, ah.  Well, it’s something else.”  Charles spoke with great reverence, and Nathan kicked himself for having stopped by at the wrong time.  The guy obviously cared about this guitar.  How satisfying it would have been to smash it…

“Right,” he said, and watched as Charles drew away, crossing to the sideboard and taking back in hand a set-aside glass of brandy.

“One of a few indulgences,” he remarked with a tight, self-aware smirk, and Nathan huffed in response.  Charles was carefully moving around the room to pull closed the middle of the bookcase, which Nathan saw was supposed to be a hidden door but had been left ajar in the other man’s haste, and from whence the faint music came. 

“You’ve been drinking?” he asked, trying not to make his calculations obvious but failing entirely, and Charles stopped with his hand on the shelf, pulled almost but not quite shut, the bell of the glass cradled in his other hand.

“Yes,” he said, and there was silence between them save for the distant music.  In a way, Nathan felt victorious – to have guessed books and weapons and luxury.  He met Offdensen’s dark, watchful gaze, and stared him down.

“That’s… your room?”

Charles paused a moment longer, then said, “Yes,” and pulled the shelf-door closed.  The music was smothered.

“Pretty, uh… you know, noticeable, there.”

“It’s not, if you don’t see it open to begin with,” Charles reassured him demurely, then straightened, poised, and asked: “Why are you here, Nathan?”

“What?  Why?”  Why?  Did he have to have a why?  He didn’t know why, anymore.

“Yes, why.”  He gazed coolly into Nathan’s eyes, fixing him to the spot, until ultimately saying with a kind of teacher-like gentleness, “If you’re after a repeat of the sub, it’s not going to happen.  Just so we’re clear,” and then taking a sip of his brandy.  Nathan understood, looking at his feet guiltily and giving a subdued nod against his intoxicated sway, but he still questioned -

“Uh, why not?”

Offdensen held his gaze coldly.  “Very hard to explain to the medical wing,” he said, muted by his brandy glass, “They know I’m a sucker for punishment but it’s, ah, not _usually_ anal.”

A vast silence moved in between them with its wife and children and brought a fruitcake for the neighbors as Charles swirled the brandy around in the bell of his glass pensively.

“Or ever, really,” he said, mostly to himself, then looked up at Nathan and tilted his head with a concerned quirk of his brow, “Was that too far?  I don’t know how much you, ah, remember.”

Nathan mumbled something like, “Mrmhmrmrhrmmh-I-rehmmhrrber,” and Charles nodded curtly.

“Good.  That’s good.  I think, not sure.”  He tapped his finger on the glass thoughtfully.  “ _I_ remember, so we’re, ah, on the same level....”

“You wanna talk about it?” asked Nathan, who sincerely did not.  He felt too huge in the tiny library.  Before him, Charles looked the appropriate size for it, like Nathan was a cat placed in a dollhouse by an overzealous child.

The manager shook his head, said, “No,” while looking past Nathan’s knees, and then raised his head to meet his gaze and smile, just faintly.  “It’s all right.  I think we can both get a bit gung-ho under pressure, Nathan.  And that - that _is_ a, ah, virtue.  But perhaps we got, ah, carried away, that time.”

He looked back into his brandy, spinning it thoughtfully, and spoke as though to it rather than Nathan, “That is what I think.  Yes.  That is what I think.  Better put to bed.”

Nathan glanced around himself, uncertain, fighting the swoon, and then frowned down at Charles.  “Okay,” he said, not sure why he’d been addressed at such length if Charles didn’t want to talk about it, but the manager was still staring into his brandy and the reason occurred to Nathan like a shorted fuse, quirking a sneer onto his face.  “Are you… drunk?”

Charles looked up at him, but took a while in answering, so Nathan tried, “On a scale from zero to Pickles on a Wednesday, where are you right now?”

“Ahh, a three?” tried Offdensen, curling his lip, and Nathan snorted at him.

“That’s disgusting.  Drinking on a weeknight.  You’re our manager.  You gonna work hungover - - - ”  he started to sneer but Charles cut him off, a placid smirk returned up at the singer.

“I drink every night.  Where are you sitting, Nathan?  You stink of Jamesons.”

“Uhhh,” Nathan swayed, plonking the bottle aside self-consciously on the shelf, “Like… a four?”

“Don’t you have a guest in your room?”  Nathan wondered how Charles could know that, but dismissed it quickly.  Their manager had _ways_.

“She’s blacked out, no fun.  Won’t talk to me.”

“What were you talking about?”  Charles raised his eyebrows over his glasses, cradling his glass close to his chest as Nathan swayed before him.

“Death.  Brutal shit.”

“Death, huh.”  Charles took a sip of his brandy, and then said, a faint, put-upon giddiness to his words, “You, ah, wanna talk about that now…?”

“Nuh.”  And Nathan shrunk back as Charles met his gaze.  The manager was getting very close to _the point_ of why he was here, and Nathan was not sure he liked that.

“But you do want to talk,” observed Charles, and Nathan bowed his head in embarrassment.

“Yeah.”

Point taken, check game and match, Charles turned away from Nathan before he rolled his eyes and pushed open the bookcase again.  “Come on, then,” he said, the music swelling as he opened the door, and Nathan hesitated, craning against his swoon to see inside.

“Uh, in…”  Charles looked back at him as he spoke, quirking an eyebrow.  “In… your bedroom?”

“You caught me in the middle of analytics.  I can listen and work,” he said, and Nathan hovered over him weirdly.

“I'unno, that’s a bit _gay…_ ”

Offdensen lead through anyway, schooling Nathan as he went, “One could say initiating sex with your manager is ‘a bit gay’ as well, not to mention, ah, likely in violation of some clause or another of my contract, but I respectfully choose to hold my tongue.”  

“Uh,” said Nathan, since he was pretty sure Charles had just said it.

“And besides,” the older man droned on as they stepped into the hearth warmth onto a shallow kind of balcony that overlooked the room beyond, the carpet warm under Nathan’s feet, and down the flanking stairs to a dark wood bar cabinet set into an alcove in the stone wall.  “We’re really extrajudicial here in Mordland, so I suppose it’s unenforceable anyway.”  From the bar he retrieved his nearly finished decanter of brandy and a second glass, filling it from the decanter and absentmindedly topping up his own as Nathan stared around dumbly above.

He didn’t reply, distracted looking around the room.  A room in his own house he’d been totally unaware of, a new room, a secret room.  Now he stood inside, Nathan judged it perhaps a little smaller than his own room, but the fishtanks lent Nathan’s domain a lot of depth it otherwise lacked.  He had been almost right about Offdensen - yes, more shelves of books, yes, more mounted weapons, yes, more plush carpets over stone and polished darkwood, a beautiful deco chandelier type thing, and what he came to realise was a huge fireplace, flanked with staircases to the balcony he stood upon with dwindling embers deep in its belly - and yet was mystified at the places he’d missed the mark.

The bar, for example, which seemed fully stocked.  Given how hidden this place was and Nathan’s muted understanding that Charles didn’t pick up, Nathan wondered who the hell all this was for.  Was it all for Offdensen?  Did he drink that heavily, bask in his own opulence so crassly with vintage guitars and rare volumes?  When Nathan thought back to their early days, when they had all tried to acclimatize to infinite money, he could faintly remember a procession of luxury cars - a Buick Somerset to begin with, regal in black, replaced when the back bumper fell off by a Riviera GS to much cooing and celebration from Pickles, and then, after the drummer had driven the GS into a wall and totaled it completely, the glorious beetle black Phantom V which had lasted them - Charles - _them_ until Offdensen had worked out the specs for the Dethlimo Mark 1 with Rolls Royce.  Charles didn’t boast about his cars, only hummed contentedly when Pickles pointed out their features, and when one was destroyed, pushed further.  Thus, Nathan mistakenly didn’t associate him with luxury; the kind of asshole that overindulged was the kind of asshole that told everyone about it.  And yet.

There was a very large bed at the other side of the room with dark maroon covers and a laptop on top of it, open where Charles had been disturbed, and Nathan was unsettled to see the thrown-aside sheets where the other man had sprung out of bed to throw on his robe and answer the door.  He was upset immediately by a mental image of Charles lounging naked in bed with his laptop and furry chest and glass of brandy and box of chocolates and cringed as he tried to dismiss it.  Gawwwd, he wasn’t gay… after all, it was Charles that had said, ‘ _Okay,’_ right?

The roof, which bore longhouse beams, felt lower than in other places in Mordhaus – in fact, felt safer, almost as safe as Pickles’ dungeon-like room or Toki’s little box.  The stone walls and floors continued here, save for where the walls were covered by bookcases or alcoves to show off delicate objects, and four specific alcoves, three of which – one on either side of the room and one above the fireplace, which they had just entered through – had bookcases at their shallow backs and had to be secret doors to other rooms, maybe even the ones he'd mistakenly checked and passed by.  There was one over the head of the bed, too, which was carved darkwood and looked to have been salvaged from some ancient castle, striking a strange balance with the modern covers and vague jazzy world stuff emitting from – yeah, when he looked closer, Nathan noticed the speakers, hidden amongst in the decorations on the bookshelves.  The result was feeling as though, now he was in the room itself, the musicians surrounded them, unseen but crystal clear.

There was _another_ Gibson ’59 down here, too, mounted on the wall with a bunch of other old guitars.  Nathan silently wondered how much they were paying the guy.

Charles held out the brandy glass to him, welcoming him down, and Nathan slowly descended, his guard up against the strange place and the other man he knew to be dangerous.  But hell, surely he could destroy Charles if they fought, surely Charles would just take it and they’d both get out alive.  Anyway, Nathan was stronger than him and Charles was naked underneath his robe.  Fuck!  Weird to think.  Nathan raked his hair back over his shoulder anxiously as he reached the manager and gently took the glass from him. 

They stood there in the firelight for a second, Nathan staring, and then the singer said, awkwardly, “Uhh… are you gay?” as if it were the hardest question in the world to ask.  Charles eyed him sternly back a beat before the smirk broke his frown, and then laughed in Nathan’s face.

He laughed so hard he had to lean on the bar.

Nathan just watched him.  He really _was_ drunk then.  Charles didn’t laugh; seeing him do so was seriously unsettling and a staggered guiltiness settled in Nathan’s gut.  “It ain’t funny,” he grumbled, and Charles wheezed as he tried to catch himself.

“Ahoo… huh?” he said around barely suppressed giggles, trying to regain his composure, and Nathan glared at him.

“It’s not.  Bein’ gay.  It ain’t funny.” 

Charles sniffed back his smirk and stared up at Nathan, sipping from his overfilled brandy glass and looking up at him.  Nathan hated when he did that.  At least he didn’t feel like a giant in this room, much larger than the other, but Charles – second only in shortness to Pickles – was so small before him, like a little dog challenging him out of its league, asking to be punted across the living room.  But where he could easily boot Pickles off his case, Charles was the immovable object.

“Does it matter?” he asked, and Nathan grunted at him, the manager raising his eyebrows in response.  “Use your words, Nathan.”

“Nah, I… uh…”  Nathan held the glass daintily, avoiding Charles’ gaze, “… guess not.”  Which meant that he was, right?  But Charles had turned away from him, returning back to his bed and his computer.  He paused by the side of the bed, as if questioning how casual he was with the whole situation and then, with a vague, dismissive gesture with his glass, chucked them out and got onto it, scooting across to his laptop and settling back into the too many pillows backed up against the headboard, all the while careful not to flash Nathan anything above the knee in his gown.

Nathan came to the edge of the bed, looking over his manager as the small man pulled his laptop onto his lap, his screen reflected in his glasses, and he wondered if this was really it.  This was happening and this was really all that would happen.  No destruction, no yelling, no great pain, just Charles’ fingers tapping on flat keys and soft music.  Nathan reached up, easily touching the huge deco chandelier with his fingertips and giving it a gentle push.  It swung on its chain, suspended from the center beam high above them, and Nathan looked around dizzied as the light danced off the hundreds of hidden reflections in the room – the polished shells of the guitars, the little darts of gold on the books, the panes of Charles’ glasses, the cases and mounts of rare pistols and machetes.  Charles barely looked up.

“Don’t do that.  It’s expensive.”

And Nathan stopped the chandelier from swinging again, stopping its wide bowl against his hand.  “Uh, sorry.”

He watched Charles a moment longer, feeling like he was an intruder, an invisible entity watching from the outside in and unknown to the man, and then shifted on the spot.  “Uh, should I sit… somewhere…?”

This time Charles did look up.  He took in Nathan’s awkwardness, judging him, and then gestured to the huge expanse of bed between them.  Nathan continued to stare, internally panicking.

“No?”  Charles looked back at his screen.  “Mm.  You don’t have to.  Go back to bed.”

Which was a challenge, and Nathan understood that, as weird as it felt.  He placed his glass on the flagstones, hefted a leg up and climbed onto the mattress, too unaware to notice the subtle shift in Charles’ flat expression to the remotest smile.  “You are gay,” mumbled Nathan, resentful of how comfortable Charles was with it, “And you’re probably in love with me or fucking, something.”

“Wouldn’t be caught dead ‘in love’,” said Charles distantly, the data on his screen scrolling through the reflection on his glasses, “And no, ah.  No time for the other thing.”

“You’ve been dead before,” pointed out Nathan, kneeling on the mattress, and Charles’ eyes darted up at him a second.

“So I have.”

But that was it.

It was now blatantly obvious to Nathan that, through his previous violations, the entirety of their power balance had shifted onto Charles.  No longer was he holding down the Dethklok empire by its seizing throat – instead, in this room, it towered around him, and he was aware even outside it that they resided deep in Mordhaus, somewhere untouchable.  He gave a defeated sigh and collapsed sideways onto the mattress, curled on his side by Charles’ feet, and listened to the music for a second.

“What is this shit, anyway,” grumbled Nathan into the covers, and Charles didn’t look up, though the reflection in his glasses changed to large, colorful squares instead.

“Yo-Yo Ma.”  He looked over his glasses then, chasing down Nathan’s form, crashed in the swath of his long black hair.  “You don’t like it?”

“It’s fucking gay.”

“Mm.”  Charles looked back at his screen.  “Tough titty, Nathan.”

But as Nathan raised his head to look at the man, he realized the squares reflected in his glasses were in fact album covers – Charles was changing the music for him.  He looked up at Nathan after a while, face still blank as ever, and said, “Massive Attack?”

“Huh?”  Nathan did not know what Massive Attack was.  He sat up, snagging a pillow from Charles’ pile and holding it close to him.  “Sure, whatever.  Sounds brutal I guess.”

Charles didn’t merit that with a comment, but the music changed and Nathan, while he didn’t exactly enjoy that hip-hop bullshit, did like it better than the world music.  He lay back down again, holding the pillow to his chest, and listened to Charles type, the other man pausing only to sip his brandy.

“This what you do every night?” asked Nathan, and Charles glanced up at him briefly, giving a soft snort to see him curled up around the pillow like a small animal.

“Ah, nope.”  Charles sipped and looked over his glasses at Nathan.  “Tonight is my night off.  First one in months.  I’m, ah… somewhat reluctant to share it, but…” – he gave a stiff shrug – “You’re okay company.”

Yep, he was definitely in love with Nathan.  The singer clutched the pillow tight to him.  This was why you never fucked chicks you knew, they always fell in love with you.  But it was confusing to Nathan – the warmth of the brandy still on his tongue, the firelight and the amber from the chandelier above, and the heavy, almost oppressive trip hop that folded down on him like a blanket were making him feel slow and horny, and he wondered if such was orchestrated by Charles.  And man, he knew if he tried to fuck again it’d just hurt.  But maybe he could get a blowjob out of him – maybe that wouldn’t be too much, or too sore, or too gay if he only received – and maybe that would dismiss this feeling like not enough and still too much was happening, and free them both from this soft, smothering hell.

Charles, on the other hand, was totally comfortable with this.

Nathan sat up, holding the pillow against his chest with his chin resting on its end, and watched his manager.  “You work on your night off?” he observed, and Charles shrugged.

“The world doesn’t stop for me.”

“We ain’t the world.”

Charles just hummed in response, taking another slow sip of his brandy.  Nathan didn’t know what that meant, but he accepted it anyway, rubbing his cheek numb against the pillow.  He’d definitely decided it didn’t matter how fucked up it was to approach your manager for head, it would end this situation without skulking out or having a fight so that was good enough.  Pickles would do it.  Pickles probably had done it; _hell_ , Pickles had probably _given_ his manager head, back in the 80s.  Guy was fucked up _but_ , considered Nathan, _but_ being on those sorts of terms with the boss – eh, whatever he was – had to have its advantages.

Now here was Charles, letting him sit drunk on his bed and sharing his wine with him, and that had to mean something.  Nathan glanced around, wondered if any of the others had been in here, and instantly knew the answer was no.  There was nowhere the others could go that Nathan was not permitted, where Nathan would not go first.  He thought, on consideration, that he had a special understanding with Charles, too – well, Charles was in love with him, but aside from that a balance, an unspoken appreciation of one another, and he thought, yes, on reflection, that was what had caused him to move on their manager in the first place.

Nothing cruel.  Just an imbalance.  And an understanding that Charles would take it.

Nathan humphed at his own thoughts and buried his face in the end of the pillow, Charles glancing up at him as he moved.  “All right?” asked his manager, and Nathan decided to just do it.  No one was watching, just do it.  He moved across, slouching beside Charles to look at his screen.

“What are you doing anyway?” he grunted, and ran his eyes blindly over the data entry tables and decimal places.  It made absolutely zero sense to him, but Charles seemed perfectly at peace, tweaking the numbers ever so slightly here and there in a thousand rows of data.

“Analytics.  Data interpretation – tweaking our, ah, decision management tech,” and there he looked over his glasses at Nathan, who was lounging very close now, “Budget stuff, Nathan.”

“Budget stuff,” Nathan grumbled, looking up and down Charles’ face.  It was weird, cos, like… Nathan didn’t really find men, like, hot, or something, whatever he was supposed to find them.  Pickles talked like that, _hot_ or _foxy_ or whatever shit came to mind.  Nathan just found Charles kinda… intense, to look at, to be close to.  Being close to Charles was like huffing paint, something Nathan hadn’t really done since high school but the memory resurfaced; in his harshness, burn and suffocation.  And his dead hazel eyes, _so_ fucking dead, so like bullets or drill bits when he gazed coolly back at Nathan…

“Yep.  Budget stuff,” he said, and Nathan sat up on his arm slightly, huffing.

“Gotta get boring.”

Charles looked back at his screen.  “Nope,” he said, moving the pad cursor to another column, and Nathan unceremoniously closed the laptop on his hand.  Charles looked at it, deadpan, a moment, then cleared his throat, said, “Nathan,” and went to open it again, and Nathan took the opportunity, with one of the manager’s hands stuck in the laptop and the other holding his brandy glass, to kiss him.

He met tightly pursed lips and a muffled, “Mm-mm!” of distaste before Charles freed his hand and pushed his face away.  Nathan stayed close, resisting the push.

“Nathan.  What did I say?” he said quietly, his hand gently pushing Nathan’s cheek against the younger man’s amorous forwards pressure, and Nathan rumbled stubbornly back at him.

“No repeats...”

“No repeats.”

“Yeah, but…”  Nathan pressed forward again and Charles leaned away from him, pushing him gently.

“Have I ever said something I didn’t mean?”

Nathan stared at him, the older man’s palm pushing firmly against his lip, and then sat back, his hair falling over his face as he retreated behind it in embarrassment.  “You gotta point.”

“Right.” 

Offdensen gave him another gentle shove which did nothing but sway the drunk Nathan, and then turned back to open his computer and reboot it from its automatic sleep mode, a soft tut escaping him as the pale light lit up his face again.  Nathan delicately pushed his hair over his shoulder, watching Charles’ fine, poised fingers on the keyboard, and then said obstinately, “I don’t want a repeat.”

“Uh huh.”  Charles didn’t look at him.  “What the hell do you want, then?”

Nathan felt insulted by his dryness.  “Man, really?  What bug’s got up your butt?  Swearin at me.”  He folded his arms and sank into Offdensen’s pillows, and although he still didn’t look at Nathan, Charles quirked an eyebrow at the response.

“Thought you, ah, liked that,” he said wryly, and Nathan growled with frustration, pulling a pillow over his face.

“No!  It’s different!  Why don’t you get it!  You get everything else!”

“Do I now.”  The music dropped away, and all Nathan could hear from beneath his pillow was Charles typing away until the manager spoke again, softly, “Nathan, could you do me a huge favour?”

Something like ‘ _Mmhmhmhmfff_ ’ came from beneath the pillow in vague affirmation, and Charles took that as a sign to go ahead.

“Could you, ah, try and save the gay crisis until _after_ we find Toki?”

 _‘Mmmfnotgay’_ said the pillow, meaty black claws curled into its dark cover, and Charles said, “Pickles.”

“Pickles don’t count,” said Nathan emphatically, clearer this time, and Charles tried not to roll his eyes.

“Right, well.”  Another pause, and then Charles sniffed – a hidden laugh.  “I can’t believe you tried to, ah – _kiss_ me.”

_‘Mmmhfhfhfmm into your bedroom man!’_

“Gesture of mateship.  A manager is more than business – in a way.  Not to, ah… give you _any_ ground, buddy-boy.”

_‘Mmmfnotgay!’_

“ _After_ we find Toki, Nathan.  _After_.  Please.  I have _way_ too much on my plate as it is _without_ , ah… this.”

There was silence from beneath the pillow, and when Charles turned his head to look at Nathan, his heavy body weighing down the mattress beside him, he saw the singer was peering at him from underneath, his eyes dimmed dark by the shadowed hollow he’d created.  Charles snorted at him.

“You’re about to say you’re sorry,” he observed, and Nathan’s face winced back in humiliation, his hand screwed into the pillow above him.  “It’s okay.  I’ve, ah, told you already, tonight even.  It’s fine.”

Offdensen looked back at his computer.  “And I don’t think you’re gay.”

He didn’t look at Nathan as the singer emerged from his hiding place, leaning up on his arm again with the pillow trapped under a huge mit and towering over Charles even in recline. 

“Still wanna, though,” he rumbled, and Charles looked up at him, blank-eyed through his glasses.

“No repea- - -”

“Not that.”

Charles opened his mouth to scold him for _you can’t always get what you want_ , something even the god damn Rolling Stones understood, but Nathan had shoved his face onto him again, and Charles, drunk, decided _to hell with it_ instead.  It had, after all, been a long time since he’d been kissed, shower conflicts and overzealous fans quickly muscled off by security aside, and Nathan, while sloppy, moved tenderly and responsively when Charles touched his jaw with his free hand.  And it felt _nice_.  Warm and soft with his chest tightening, and Nathan tasting like spit, someone else’s lipstick and Jamesons.  As he would.

Nathan, for his part, found kissing Charles to be bizarre – similarly small like Pickles, with none of the beard fluff but a subtle roughness of stubble to his skin, and nowhere near as pissed, more calculated in the way he moved in return.  Glasses pressed between them this time, feeling clumsy.  The brandy’s complex taste, stained into Offdensen’s lips, bit at him when he tried to push deeper, and the whole surreal, intoxicating experience quickly overwhelmed him and forced him to break out of it, raising his head though keeping close to Charles.

The manager bowed his head away and tapped Nathan on the chest lightly, licking his lips at the weird feeling.  “That’s enough,” he said softly, and Nathan sank down beside him, his hair strewn awry over his face.

“You don’t wanna talk about this either, huh,” the singer mumbled.

“Nope.”

“Good.  Uh… me neither.”

After too long sitting in silence, Charles once again playing with the analytics program, he looked across at Nathan curled into the pillow he held and watching his manager sadly.  Offdensen said nothing, barely even blinked, but raised his arm and slipped it around Nathan’s shoulders, drawing him close.

A deep sorrow balled in Nathan’s black and brutal heart as Offdensen held him, the almost finished brandy glass tipped in his dainty fingers and the other still guided on the keyboard, and he curled in on himself to feel it.  He had come up here to conquer, to feel control and supremacy, and instead he was silently dominated by compassion and quiet and so many  stupid, vulnerable things.  Fuck Offdensen, fuck his mind-games; lying against him, Nathan felt him everywhere, in the foundations of the building, the massive beams above, the fire, the sadness, the violence, the stage below his feet.

He felt Charles’ fingers touch his hair, barely twitched where they held the glass but toying, his thumb stroked through the thick dark locks, and it utterly crushed him, crashed against Charles’ chest and holding the pillow close, closing his eyes to fight back the tears.

“You gonna find him though, right,” he struggled, his voice a distant scratch, and Charles said quietly, “Yes,” the word reverberating through his chest, and Nathan held the pillow over his face, and blacked out.

That was the last Nathan remembered of the night, awakening to a dark room laid on top of the covers and sunk in the pillows, his arms trapping the pillow and his dethfone vibrating in his back pocket.  The hangover pinned him to the mattress long enough that the vibrating stopped, but he eventually stirred, fishing it out to its dim screen light and laying it on the bed in front of him.  Charles must have vanished in the night, he thought, but the screen said it was already past noon.  The room simply had no windows.  Still, the manager had snuck out without Nathan’s knowledge, the near-full glass of brandy still on the flagstones where Nathan had left it.

There was a missed call from Pickles, and a text message that read:

SO saw Charlie dis mornin… sez I

shud probly talk 2 u or smth… idk

wat hes talkin bout… cn we like

agree hes a total db n not to tell

him shit? cuz old boys gettin on

my case l8ly &... honestly i feel

so attakd. he gotta hav better shit

2 do dood!!!

 

Nathan squinted at it, a rush of relief coming over him, and texted back:

 

**WHAT A DOUCHEBAG**

 

i no rite. u cummin on d jet 2

singapor 2nite dood…

 

**YEAH**

 

yeah dood!

 

And Nathan collapsed back in the dark, aware that all – minus one or two small things – was on its way to being right again.

**Author's Note:**

> comments greatly appreciated, they keep me going.


End file.
